Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Today it is my pleasure to present New York Bestselling author, Stephanie Lauren. Stephanie is currently touring her book Viscount Breckinridge to the Rescue. Scroll down to find out more about a fabulous giveaway opportunity and a brief, but very interesting interview.

You are cordially invited to the wedding of Miss Heather Cynster

...but not before she encounters kidnappers, danger, and a daring rescue at the hands of Viscount Breckenridge.

Determined to hunt down her very own hero, one who will sweep her off her feet and into wedded bliss, and despairing of finding him in London's staid ballrooms, Heather Cynster steps out of her safe world and boldly attends a racy soiree.

But her promising hunt is ruined by the supremely interfering Viscount Breckenridge, who whisks her out of scandal-and straight into danger when a mysterious enemy seizes her, bundles her into a coach, and conveys her out of London.

Now it's up to the notorious Breckenridge to prove himself the hero she's been searching for all along...

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A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book and others (up to $25,000) will be donated to the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance.

GIVEAWAY DETAILS

Stephanie and Avon / HarperCollins will be giving away a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate to one randomly drawn commenter during the course of the tour AND All commenters will be entered into a drawing for not only the grand prize of a $100 Amazon gift card, but one of four autographed sets of Stephanie Lauren's Avon backlist.

So, follow along and comment at each stop!

INTERVIEW

Were there any special challenges in plotting this trilogy?

Whenever you are working with more than one book, there’s an additional challenge in scripting the overarching storyline. However, working with a set of three, consecutive-in-time – meaning running directly one after the other in time – books for this trilogy was a lot, lot easier than the work involved in scripting and working with the concurrent villains’ storyline in the Black Cobra Quartet. That was a real headache, and not something I’ll soon do again! In comparison, the trilogy was relatively easy, although of course more work than three entirely separate books. In the case of the overarching story in this trilogy, the principal decision to be made in progressing through the books is how much to reveal in each book – however, there is, of course, a twist to the tale, as there so often is in my books! – and that, I’ve discovered, imposes additional demands on how much must be revealed of that overarching story earlier rather than later.

Most of the action in the trilogy occurs in Scotland. Why Scotland?.

That’s one of those questions that I really don’t have an answer for – I just always knew that Heather and her hero ended up with Richard and Catriona, their family and household, at the manor in the Vale of Casphairn. That was one of those “story” things that simply always was – I had no idea how they got up there, or why. I just knew that’s where they ended up. Later in the interview I’ll touch on how that “story fact” for want of a better term played into the rest of the story that unfolds in Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue.

How did the “searching for a hero” concept come about?

This was one of the earliest elements of the trilogy to become clear to me – from the time I wrote the Cynster twins’ stories, On A Wild Night and On A Wicked Dawn, way back in 2001, I knew that this – actively searching for their hero - was what would motivate Heather and Eliza especially in proactively initiating their stories. As younger girls, schoolgirls at that time, they saw their older cousins, Amanda and Amelia, go out and seek their heroes, both stepping beyond the accepted social lines to do it, and saw them succeed in every respect. After that, of course Heather and Eliza would have similar hero-standards, and once they failed to find their heroes in the obvious places, neither would hesitate to look beyond polite circles for their man. From that background, I knew that they would actively do something that would precipitate the action – they would be actively searching for their hero, would do something, go somewhere, and that would lead them to him, albeit in ways neither of them anticipate.

Thank you so much, Stephanie, for taking time to share a bit of the background so that we can have a general picture of how various aspects of this story were brought together. It's been interesting and informative!

37 comments:

I just wanted to say I love all your books Stephanie. I'm a Devil's woman when it comes to the Cynsters and always will be. I can't wait to read this newest release and Congrats on that by the way. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. And thank you Laurie for bringing Stephanie to us.Carol LLucky4750 (at) aol (dot) com

I'm looking forward to these Cynster ladies. I like the idea of searching for a hero and the ladies taking their own destiny into their hands. I'm not surprised because they have spunk like the Cynsters I have met but it should make things interesting.

Ms. Laurens, I am really enjoying the latest in the Cynster series. Heather's story was really terrific and I can't wait to see what you do for Eliza and Angelica! The mysterious Laird doesn't seem terribly evil but certainly determined!!

Thanks for some background on your book, Stephanie. I'm so glad you sent them to Scotland. I don't know why, because I've never been there myself, but it seems like such a magical romantic location!!jwitt33 at live dot com

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